Mascots
by 5002Ultramarine
Summary: You know those Inklings that are in the promotional artwork and on the box for Splatoon? You see how cool their designs are? They look so cool, Nintendo could've made a manga or anime with them as the characters. Well, that never happened, so the next best thing would be to make my own story centered around them and their lives. Mascots deserve to be people, too.


**Quick author's note. If you're reading this, I will assume that you're at least familiar with the gear and weapons in Splatoon 1. If not, feel free to check Inkipedia to see what they look like. After reading, any review is appreciated.**

* * *

Thump...thump...thump…

The sound of heavy feet scraping against the floor roused me from sleep.

"Zzz...hm? What?..."

Thump...thump...thump…

The footsteps continued, growing louder and closer at an alarming pace.

THUMP… THUMP… THUMP…

Whatever it was, it was right in front of me now. As the thing inched even closer, I opened my eyes to see…

A phone.

Someone was holding a phone in my face.

"Hey, it actually worked. Noice!", I hear a girl's voice say.

Rubbing my eyes, I take a closer look at the phone in the girl's hand, and see that it's open to a video titled "Creepy Footsteps [Extended]". Looking over at the girl sitting next to me, I see she's about my age and wearing a Takoroka Mesh cap, with a Black Squideye shirt and a pair of White Kicks. She had a dark skin tone, which made her pink tentacles stand out against her smirking face. Her clothes looked pretty worn, but even in my half-asleep state, I could still tell she makes them look good. Still sleepy, I groggily ask the girl, "What are you doing?"

"I'm waking you up, dum-dum," she replied with an almost mocking tone. "I just wanted to make sure you didn't go into a coma after that triple corkscrew flip into a faceplant you decided to stylishly display for everyone."

"Faceplant?", I ask myself out loud. As my sleepiness recedes, I look around and start to recall the events that lead up to this moment. After getting out of the airport, I called my Uncle Samuel for directions to the nearest train station. I found my way to the station and bought a ticket to Inkopolis, but when I got on board, I think I tripped on something. I must've landed harder than usual if it was enough to knock me out.

I continue looking around the train from where I'm sitting. The interior looks way cleaner and neater than the ones from back home. It's also a lot less crowded than what I expected for a Japanese subway train. I looked out the window to see a wall rushing past. Nothing interesting there.

While I'm still inspecting the train, pink-hair-girl continues, "Well, it might have been a little more than a faceplant." She snickered as if it were the funniest thing in the world. "The impact of your face hitting the floor was enough to shake the train car. As if that wasn't embarrassing enough, your backpack somehow went flying through the air, and after your crash landing, dropped on the back of your head like sack of stonefish! I've seen some _carp_ , but the _boatload_ of bad luck required for something like that is _inkredible_."

Did this girl just make a fish pun, a boat pun, and an overused ink pun at my expense? Figures. Of course I'd be the butt of at least one joke before I even made it to the city. I'm not one to whine, but I'd like to go at least one day without immediately being treated like a loser. I mean, I get that she's a complete stranger that doesn't know me at all, but a little compassion isn't too much to ask for, right?

"Oh, by the way..." She picked up my backpack from the empty seat to her left, and handed it to me. "I kept an eye on your stuff just in case you came to. I didn't peek, I swear."

Huh. I didn't expect that. Maybe this girl isn't all bad. Taking my bag, I respond, "Hey, thanks! That's actually kind of nice of you. Not many people would do something like that for someone they don't know. What's your name?"

"I have a multitude of names I go by," she proclaims with an unnecessarily dramatic air. "Some know and fear as _The Quickrose._ Others seek my fashion advice as _Miss Freshionista._ Everyone else knows me as _That One Kid Down The Block That's Too Poor To Own A Cellphone._ But you can call me Laura."

"Uh, okay? My name is John." Laura gives me an expectant look, as if she's waiting for more. "What?"

"That's it? Oh my cod, you're so boring. Don't you have a nickname? Anything special that people like to call you?" Then, after taking a deep breath, she demands with a deep, booming voice, (for a fourteen-year old girl, anyway), **"What be thou title, young squire?"**

"...It's just John, you nerd."

* * *

It didn't take long to realize this girl was a complete loon, but because I didn't have anything else to do, I continued talking to her. I've made many mistakes in my life, and that was one of them. Laura's eccentricity rose and fell throughout the conversation with no discernible pattern, which started to give me a headache and forced me to look out the window just to save my own sanity. To my surprise, I saw the night sky looming above with a heavy darkness, save for the half moon floating above.

"Hey Laura, what time is it?", I ask.

"Um…" She pulled a phone out of her pocket and checked the time. "11:44 pm. We've only been on here for, like, four minutes."

"Couldn't you have woken me up a little later, then? I didn't have to be up for the entire train ride."

"Well, I still didn't know whether you were comatose or not, so it might have been dangerous to check later." With a smile, she adds, "Plus, I really like using a phone to mess with people. They make it so easy to pretend I didn't do it! All I have to do is put it up to my ear and act like I'm in the middle of a call."

"Yeah, I guess that's true- hol' up. I thought you didn't have a phone."

She shrugs. "I don't. My parents could never afford to buy me one."

It was at that moment that I thought, "Okay, now I'm confused. If she's too poor to own a phone, then whose phone did she have earlier?" And then it hit me. I knew exactly whose phone it was, and I felt stupid for not noticing it earlier. I looked at Laura directly, and said with the same dramatic voice she used earlier, _**"Thou shalt release mine cellular contraption, thot, lest I shall cry havoc and let slip the dogs- nay, the KRAKENS of war."**_

"Heh, who's the nerd now?" She begins to hand me my phone with a smirk on her face, but I snatched it out of her hands before she could do anything else with it. "Woah there, chill out for a sec!" she says, still smirking. "I may have lied about the 'no peeking' thing, but I didn't mean to actually steal it. Plus, that was the only thing I took. What's that dirty look for, do you not trust me?"

"No."

Laura dramatically proclaims with a strangely British accent, "Gasp! Your words wound me, good sir!"

"I only said one word."

"They pierce me like an arrow through a seagull's beak!"

"Why a seagull?"

"And like the phoenix, I fall to the earth, flightless."

"Aren't phoenixes supposed to, you know, rise from the ashes and all that?"

Suddenly, Laura gets all cheery and dramatically shouts, "Why, you're right! I shall not wallow in my own nest of feathery sorrow. I will rise and soar like the son of Icarus!"

"Didn't that guy… Oh, forget it. Aside from your weird bird fixation, this analogy has been derailed enough as it is," I say as I rub my temples. My headache was getting stronger at a rate almost as annoying as her.

"Are you implying that I..." Laura gives me a cheeky grin as she says, "lost my _TRAIN_ of thought?" Somewhere in the world, a drum set goes off.

I placed my face between my hands in a futile attempt to ease my headache. "Ugh… Why did I end up on the same train as you?"

"Dunno." Laura shrugs again. "Why are you on a train to Inkopolis this late, anyway?" Finally, a normal conversation topic! I'm just going to pretend like everything before that point didn't happen.

"I'm moving in with my uncle for a while. He lives here in Japan and-"

"Woah, no way, so am I! My parents are sending me to live with my uncle's family since they were too deep in debt to support me for much longer. It took them a whole year to scrape together enough money for my plane ticket, but they did it, and now here I am!"

My eyes widen. An uncomfortable silence forms. I got that she was poor from her little title exhibition, but I never would've thought it was THAT bad. "That's...That's terrible," I manage to say. That's all I _can_ say. I'm too in shock over how nonchalantly she said that.

"Yeah, yeah, if I had a dime for every time I heard that… I probably wouldn't be here in Japan, actually," She mumbled to herself.

"Woah, woah, how can you be so calm about this?! How- how can you just act as if everything's all hunky-dory when your own parents can't- I mean-"

"Dude, chill out. It's cool, it doesn't bother me. It was actually my idea to do this."

"What?! Why?"

Laura looked away and thought to herself for a moment. "...Okay, I guess it's okay to tell you. Remember my third title? _'That One Kid Down The Block That's Too Poor To Own A Cellphone'_ is actually my least favorite. It's too on the nose."

"Um… I don't get what you mean."

All of Laura's previous enthusiasm was suddenly gone, as if it were never there in the first place. The mood transition gave almost the entire train a melancholy feel. She started staring at nothing in particular, as if in deep thought, and said in a near whisper, "Look, I don't… I just don't like being known as the poor kid. I'm okay with wearing clothes bought in a thrift store, not having a phone, I'm even okay with having to eat food bought with food stamps, but not that. When you're the poor kid, everyone looks down on you, even if they're not aware of it, as if they were looking at an injured animal at a zoo. I hate that feeling…"

"Pity. You hate being pitied." Now that's something I know all about. However, I still don't get something. I ask Laura, "I can sympathize with you, but I still don't understand why you'd choose to live with your uncle all the way across the world. Why didn't your parents just take you to Kid Protection Services?"

"You don't get it?" Laura brought her knees up onto the seat and wrapped her arms around them. "The KPS' Kinship Care program doesn't apply if the kid's relatives are outside the country. They would just put me under the care of another family, one that could provide for me better. I know they mean well, but I could never live in a situation like that. I'd constantly feel like the odd one out, like a walking poster child for charity. At least this way, I can stay with people I'm related to. That's why I came up with the idea to do this a year ago."

Wow. This is some heavy stuff. Honestly, I'm not even sure if it's okay for me to know all of this. "Hey, Laura?", I ask.

"Yeah?" She doesn't look up.

"This all seems really personal, so why are you telling a stranger like me?"

Laura pulled the brim of mesh cap down over her eyes and said, "Well, Mom always tells me that it's bad to bottle up my feelings, so every once in a while, we have a heart-to-heart and tell each other what's been bothering us. She's not here, though, so I guess you'll have to do." Something about that response tells me that I should feel insulted, but I can't argue with her logic. It's like writing about your problems in your diary. I mean, not that I would know about that. She continues, "Besides, once we get off this train, we'll be complete strangers again. I can vent to you however I like, and because we'll probably never see each other again, it'll be as if no one ever knew. I don't ever have to think about it again."

"Would you have told me anyway if I hadn't asked?"

Laura shrugged for the third time. "Probably."

I shake my head. "You just do whatever makes sense in your own head, don't you? It's as if you're completely unaffected by common sense. Who are you, Spongebob Squarepants?"

Laura apparently found that funny, and she gave a quiet chuckle that quickly grew into laughter. At that same moment, the gloomy atmosphere disappeared all at once, as if it were completely controlled by Laura's mood. "Wow, that's… Ha ha! Oh, I can't believe how accurate that is. I always wanted to be like Spongebob when I was little!"

"You wanted to be like a sea sponge stuck in a dead-end job?"

She laughs even harder. "Pfft, hahaha! If you've been packing jokes like that, then I guess I was wrong about you. Maybe you're not completely boring." That wasn't really meant to be a joke, but whatever. At least she liked it.

Laura catches her breath, pushes the brim of her mesh cap back up, and gives me a big grin. "You know, for how uninteresting of a person you are, you're surprisingly comfortable to be around. Maybe that was why it was so easy to tell you about my life."

"Oh, uh, thanks," I reply. Laura seems a lot nicer all of a sudden. "That makes me feel a little better, I guess. It sure doesn't make the headache you gave me any weaker, though."

"I regret nothing," she says with another grin. Yeah, can't say I didn't expect that. "Well, I guess I do feel a bit sorry about laying all that heavy stuff on you without giving you a choice in the matter."

"Well, it's alright. I at least got to know that you're actually Amerinkan like me and not Japanese." I check my phone for the time. The train is almost at the station.

"Dude, couldn't you tell from my skin color?"

"We're Inklings. We can change our skin color anytime we want, remember?" I look up from my phone to see that Laura has a completely different skin tone now. Instead of chocolate brown, she's now a pale white.

"Oh yeah, you're right. How could I have forgotten?", she says coyly.

I should've seen that coming. Well, at least she's back to… well, not exactly normal, but at least she's not all gloomy anymore. It's still a little unnerving to see just how fast her mood flipped, though. I get the feeling she may be bipolar, but something tells me that this is all just part of who she is."Are you this much of a troll to everyone?"

"Nah," she responds. "Only when I'm bored or around boring people."

"Can you stop calling me boring? It's annoying."

"If you want me to stop, than **ENTERTAIN ME, PEASANT!** Why are you moving in with your uncle?"

"Are you gonna interrupt me again?"

"No, I'd never!" she says with poorly hidden sarcasm as she slowly put one of her hands behind her back.

"You have your fingers crossed, don't you?"

"Dangit, I was hoping you wouldn't notice. Alright, I won't interrupt. LET THE STORY TIME BEGIN!"

"Stop screaming. I'm going to attend a military academy. Normally, I'd be too young to get in, but my uncle pulled some strings."

Surprisingly, Laura didn't interrupt, not even as I told her about how military school is normally for high schoolers or college kids. I explained that they were letting me in early as a member of their after-school undergraduate program, on the condition that I finish middle school in Inkopolis.

"It should be a snap," I say. "Besides, it's the last day of March. The school year's almost over anyway."

Even more surprisingly, Laura stayed silent for a whole ten seconds. Then she hesitantly asked, "Uh… You're an eighth grader, right?"

"Yeah, for now."

"Do you know how school years work here?" She asks with an eyebrow raised.

"Same as Amerinka, right? Starts in August, ends in May?"

"Oh no. I think you're in for a splash of cold water, buddy."

"...What's that supposed to mean?" I'm getting a really bad feeling right about now.

"What I mean is, you might be in for a rude awakening. Well, another one. Japanese school years start in April."

"So? I'll just move on to ninth grade a month early."

Laura nervously replies, "I mean… They might not let you…"

What.

Laura continues, twiddling her thumbs all the while. "I'm an eighth grader too, but because I technically haven't completed it, my new school put me in an eighth grade class again when my aunt registered me online. They might do the same with you."

Cut the music. Houston, we have a problem.

I feel like I've been hit with a disruptor. My senses fail me, and the world fades away as I silently drift into the endless void of pain of despair. My soul flickers and goes out, like a candle in the winter wind. I feel nothing but sadness and desolation. Then, a small light shines into existence, and I move towards it, drawn like a flower to the sun. Closer, closer, closer, closer, closer…

"Ooh, these are some cool Pilot Goggles!"

My eyes snap open and glow red with the fury of a thousand sunfish.

 **"** ** _DON'T TOUCH THOSE."_**

"Woah!" Laura drops my bookbag in surprise and I wrench it away, looking inside to make sure my goggles were still there. To my relief, they are, and they're just as polished as they were on the day that… oh no.

I look up to see Laura staring at me in shock and worry for her own safety. Can't blame her. If I was talking to someone and they suddenly freaked like that, I would want some kind of explanation to reassure me that the person I'm sitting next to is, in fact, not a mental asylum escapee in the form of a fourteen year-old squid. But I can't tell her about...that. That's too personal. Too soon. But I can already see the questions on her face, like 'What's wrong? Was it something I said? Wait, why does he need to come all the way to Japan just for a military academy?' All questions I don't want to answer, even to someone that practically poured out her life to me just now. Think, John, think. How do I get out of this?

Just then, a voice comes on over the intercom. "We have arrived at our designated destination: Inkopolis Plaza. Have a nice night, and we hope to see you again."

That works.

As soon as the train doors slide open, I grab my bag and make a run for it, shoving aside anyone in my way until I find a bathroom to hide in. I found a spot where I could see people outside, but not be seen by people looking in, and waited. Eventually, I see Laura pass by, along with a kid in glasses and a big burly dude with facial hair manlier than a village of lumberjacks. Laura seems to be looking around, probably for me, until the kid in glasses starts dragging her along by the hair. I also notice that she's back to her normal skin color.

Well, crisis averted. Now I don't have to relive The Event again. At least not until I go to sleep, anyway. As I step out of the bathroom to go look for my uncle, who came to pick me up, I wonder over whether Laura was right. The school I'm transferring to wouldn't make me repeat 8th grade, right?

Right?


End file.
